איך שינוי נוצר? תהליך האימוץ של מדיניות מיצוי הזכויות במוסד לביטוח לאומי

During the second decade of the new millennium, the take-up of rights became the focus of policy by the National Insurance Institute (NII), Israel’s social security agency. In particular, during the period between 2012 and 2016, the institution underwent an organizational transformation which underscored the need to expand the access of citizens to NII cash benefits. This move towards the take-up of rights was motived primarily by a desire to respond to a crisis of legitimacy and a growing perception in public opinion that the NII was a bureaucratic body alienated from citizens. This article draws upon the Discursive Institutionalist framework in order to examine the adoption of a pro-take-up policy by the NII. The findings of the study presented inthe article reveal that a major factor in the adoption of the idea of take-up of rights by the NII leadership was the efforts of a discourse coalition, comprised of university-based academics and researchers within the NII, which formed in the second halfof the first decade of millennium. Its members sought to underscore the problem of non-take-up and advocated directly and indirectly for the adoption of policy changes by the NII intended to enhance take-up of benefits. The leadership of the NII, headed by the incoming director-general, Shlomo Mor-Yosef, embraced the take-up idea as a means to address the lack of trust of citizens towards the NII and to deal with external pressures, particularly efforts by for-profit and civil society organizations engagedin encouraging take-up of benefits. Given their inability to introduce major changes in benefit structures due to Ministry of Finance opposition, the NII sought to increase take-up by introducing changes in work procedures, establishing agencies (funded by the NII) to assist in take-up, and adopting automatic access to benefits without the need to apply for them.